This invention concerns a multipurpose cooling line for rolled wire or wire rod leaving a coil-winder machine able to serve the whole range of wires to be wound in bundles, whether the wires are made of steel with a high content of carbon, or equivalent or of steel with a low content of carbon, or equivalent.
Rolling plants which process wire rod comprise at their end one or more coil-forming headstocks that serve their own cooling line, which includes at its end one or more reels to collect the coils in bundles.
At the present time, to cool the coils of wire rod coming from a coil-forming headstock or coil-winder machine processing steel coils with a high content of carbon, or equivalent, the coils are lapped with a flow of forced draft that removes the heat in the coils at about 25.degree.-30.degree. C. a second. Instead, when it is necessary to cool steel with a low content of carbon, or equivalent, the cooling of the coils takes place in a screened manner, normally by employing insulation hoods, so that the cooling does not exceed 0.4.degree.-0.5.degree. C. a second.
Therefore, when steel with a low content of carbon is cooled, the stay time is very long and therefore the length of the cooling line is very long.
GB-A-2,l20,589 discloses a plant to cool coils. This plant comprises terminally a series of particular reception means, which lie on a conveyor line, and one or another of them is included at a single position for discharge of cooled coils. This document does not teach the provision of means for controlled cooling of the loose coils nor of stabilization means in line with the coiled bundles. It provides containers to gather the bundles in an insulated environment, but these containers are themselves insulated, are installed on conveyor means and entail the known problems of transferring the coils into the container so as to form a bundle. Moreover, the conveyor means move on runways, with the relative transfer problems and can carry only a limited number of containers and cannot be used on runways lying at 90.degree. to each other.
DE-A-No. 3.020.229 teaches only the provision of a casing for the controlled cooling of coils being cooled.